Essays on Freedom of Action

by Ted Honderich

Essays on Freedom of Action, first published in 1973, brings together original papers by contemporary British and American philosophers on questions which have long concerned philosophers and others: the question of whether persons are wholly a part of the natural world and their actions the necessary effects of causal processes, and the question of whether our actions are free, and such that we can be held responsible for them, even if they are the necessary effects of casual processes. This volume will be of interest not only to those who are primarily concerned with philosophy but also to students in those many other disciplines in which freedom and determinism arise as problems.

Genres: Philosophy

226 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1973

About the author

Edgar Dawn Ross "Ted" Honderich was a Canadian-born British philosopher, who was Grote Professor Emeritus of the Philosophy of Mind and Logic, University College London.

Reviews

[Jimmy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I signed this book out of the University of New Hampshire library. It had been signed out twice before me: 1990 and 2003. Now me in 2011. After reading the book I understand why so few have read it. I call it "philosophy speak." The issue of free will versus determinism has never been solved in philosophy after a few hundred years of debate. It's language like this book that's part of the problem. I wonder if these philosophers even want to solve it. Do they just want to keep the discussion going to give them a reason for being. The final solution can only come from science.

[James Bremner · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is only fair to the authors of the book to state up-front that I am very much a layman when it comes to philosophy. It is, perhaps, because of this that a number of the essays in this book were uninteresting to me (and concerned critiques of nuanced views of other modern philosophers whom I had not read and did not know).
There were other essays, however, which I thoroughly enjoyed, although even these took slow reading and a lot of concentration (not at all a bad thing and perhaps how all philosophy should be read anyway!). Primarily, these were Daniel Dennett and Ted Honderich's essays (the final two) which together make a very convincing case for a form of atheistic determinism (rather than a theological one, although the two are surely connected at points).